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Egyptians gather in Tahrir Square before Friday prayer to celebrate Mubarak's ouster one week ago today. Photo by Hussein Malla/AP Photo

Thousands of Egyptians  are in Cairo’s Tahrir Square today to celebrate former President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster last Friday.

Meanwhile, Eight Egyptian judges and lawyers are in their third day of meetings to amend the country’s constitution. They were appointed by the Supreme Council of the military, which heads the government.

Egypt watchers say this panel is a strong sign the military will keep its promise and push the country towards democracy. But some fear this marks a new era of military rule.

All day, Military bands have been playing patriotic songs and handing out flags.

For many Egyptians, the army has a special status: it ousted the monarchy almost 60 years ago and has just put an end to 30 years of autocratic rule.

New York University Middle East studies professor Zach Lockman says that’s why some Egyptians are willing to overlook the bad stuff.

“They are not thinking about the part where the soldiers stood by and allowed the thugs to attack the demonstrators,” he said.  ”And the military itself has picked up lots of people. We don’t know where they are.”

Lockman says its possible this revolution could go south—the way the 1952 military coup did. Then, promises for democracy gave way to rule by one autocratic general after another.

Mubarak team is still in place. His defense minister, Mohammed Tantawi now heads the Supreme Council which appointed the constitutional panel.

In one of the diplomatic cables revealed by Wikileaks, “civilian analysts and academics” are quoted as calling Tantawi “Mubarak’s poodle.”

Barnard College political science professor Sheri Berman points out that history doesn’t show many successful transitions from autocracy to democracy.

“The military will come in  a period of disorder as the only well functioning national institution and often times promise to turn over power, but then not do so,” she said.

But this time could be different. Three Mubarak-era ministers were arrested thursday including one responsible for the brutal crackdown on protesters.

And the constitutional panel includes an outspoken member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a Coptic Christian.

They are considering presidential term limits, judicial supervision of elections and  easing the way for opposition parties.

All this makes Lockman think military rule is only temporary.

“I suspect that they are serious in not wanting to be running things indefinitely,” he said. “They want to protect their position, they want to make sure things don’t get out of hand, but they don’t want to run things day-to-day.”

The Egyptian military already has a lot to run: it provides janitorial services and child care, and produces everything from exercise machines to fertilizer.

It’s estimated that as much as one-third of Egypt’s economy is under military control, but the army’s actual revenue is a state secret.

The U.S. provides just over one and a third billion dollars in military aid to the country each year.

Berman says the military could turn things around, as long as the protesters stay involved.

“What we have to hope here is that the head of steam built up by the protests will keep the military committed to that timeline that they have given, and that elections will actually be held and that a transition will actually occur,” she said.

The crowds in Tahrir square suggest that Egyptians won’t let up on the military anytime soon.

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Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testified before the Senate Finance Committee last Wednesday. Susan Walsh/AP Photo

Representative Todd Akin, a Republican from Missouri, read about it in the paper. So when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was sitting before him at a hearing of the House Budget Committee on Wednesday, he thought he would bring it up.

“It appears from a WSJ article that we’re going to increase the IRS budget by 9.4% and hiring 5,000 or 5,100 agents at the cost of 460 billion dollars,” said Akin.

Its actually 460 million dollars. That puts the total boost to the IRS budget at 1.1 billion dollars. But whatever the numbers it doesn’t make sense to Akin.

“Not to mention the fact that it would make us look better if we didn’t have a goon squad 5000 more IRS agents tromping around the country with the economy the way it is,” said Akin.

“I hope we’re not being reckless about talking about the people who work for as being part of a goon squad,” said Earl .

Blumenauer is a Democratic Representative  from Oregon. Where his colleague sees excess, he sees a need.

“I’ve met with accountants and attorneys in my community who wonder why in the heck we’re not auditing anymore,” said Blumenauer.

Treasury Secretary Geithner told the House Committee why such a budget increase makes sense in hard times.

“All the people that look carefully into how the IRS works say that if you put a dollar carefully into enforcement, customer service things like that, you get more than four dollars back,” said Geithner. “Why is that fair? It’s because by helping people meet their obligations you make sure that other people are baring too heavily the cost of being citizens of the country.”

In Obama’s budget plan, the 5,100, new IRS employees would mostly work in customer service and technical jobs. It should make it easier for Americans to file tax returns.

Eric Toder, co-director of think thank, the Tax Policy Center, agrees that we should beef up enforcement.

“Audit rates are not high in historical terms and there’s huge amount of non-compliance particularly among small businesses,” said Toder. “Most wage earners because of withholding pay virtually all the taxes they owe.”

But coming down on small business could stifle growth. That’s according to Jeff Stier, a Senior Fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

“Its really business that brings us out of recession,” said Stier. ”The best thing government can do is get out of the way and allow business to operate. Rather than hiring more agents breathing down everyone’s neck, perhaps they ought to consider simplifying the tax code.”

Eric Toder, of the Tax Policy Center, says that for now, we need to work with what we have.

“The question of what tax laws should be is really a separate question,” said Toder. “The tax laws now are what they are. If there were a simpler tax code maybe we could have a smaller IRS. But we don’t have that.”

In their budget, Republicans would actually cut the IRS by 1 percent.

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NFL's Roger Goodell (left) and NFLPA's DeMaurice Smith are the main players in these negotiations. Photo by Charles Dharapak/AP.

The National Football League and its union, the NFL Players Association announced today they’ve agreed to meet with a federal mediator for the next week. It’s an effort to negotiate a new Collective Bargaining Agreement and avoid a strike that could mean an entire year without football.

Simply put, team owners and players are at odds on how to divide football’s massive revenues: a 9 billion dollar pie. Other points of disagreement include the addition of two regular season games, increased benefits for retired players and a rookie salary cap. Robert Boland is a sports business professor at New York University. He says team owners have considerable leverage.

“The worst-case scenario probably right now is that the owners would choose to shut down the game to force an agreement on the players,” he said. “The players would eventually run out of money and sue for peace.”

This is called a lockout. It’s the management’s way of offsetting a strike. Boland says strikes are legal in football, but costly.

“A lockout allows management to stop that economic damage from happening at a critical time by saying we’re just going to cease operation so you can’t hurt us,” he said. “It’s been quite effective in hockey and basketball.”

In the event of a lockout, players wouldn’t get any bonuses or workout off-season money. Team owners on the other hand would still be able to rely on billions of dollars in television revenue. Recently, the players’ union director, DeMaurice Smith, reminded reporters that team owners have consistently earned more since 2006, when the last union contract was struck. Yet, player’s salaries are still years behind.

“We have pushed hard to first get a proposal to understand a justification for a rollback in players share that would put us back around 1992 or 1993,” Smith said. “It’s that serious.”

But NFL commissioner Roger Goodell says the process can’t be rushed. During his annual State of the League press conference on February 4^th, the mood was pretty light, even when player and sometime journalist Chad Ochocinco took the mic.

But then, the Cincinnati Bengals receiver asked him when to expect a deal. Goodell wouldn’t commit.

“We will get an agreement, and I think that’s only going to happen when there’s intense negotiations between your union and the owners,” he said. “This is this the window of opportunity to get this done right because otherwise uncertainty is going to seep into all of our operations.”

Both sides have yet to make concessions. Ken Belson writes about the business of sports for the New York Times. He says the dispute has been somewhat sensationalized by both parties and the media.

“It feels a little bit like a Hollywood negotiation, just given the stature of the players and the league,” he said. “I’ve covered enough labor negotiations to know that a lot of this is theater for our consumption to get one side’s point across or the other side’s point across, and both sides will sort of claim that Armageddon is near.”

Boland, the NYU professor, says the ball is now in the owners’ hands. He says if games are shut down, they would lose money because they wouldn’t sell any tickets or play any games.

“However, they would have a long period of time before they actually play any of those games,” he said. “If they locked out in March, they’d have six months really before games started to be played again and they had any real loss. So they would at least make money in the short run from their television revenue, and not have to play the players.”

A lockout would still  end up hurting team owners, if only for the potential loss of thousands of fans. Boland says that every sport that’s had a significant work stoppage, like a loss of half a season or the loss of a championship, has always taken a lot of time to recover.

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Teacher layouts may affect P.S. 65 in East New York. Larry Tung/Columbia Radio News

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s new budget proposal has some hard news for public school teachers.  He says he needs to cut more than 6000 of them from the city’s payroll.  That’s about 8 percent of the city’s public school educators.  If the cut actually happens, it would be the biggest teacher layoff since the 1970s.

It’s 3pm – And school’s out for kindergarteners at P.S. 65 in East New York, Brooklyn.

One of their teachers, Luz Paternostro is waiting outside with them until they’re picked up.

A product of New York City public schools, the 22-year-old says she knew she wanted to teach when she was a student at Queens College.

“It’s fascinating to see children learn and to be the person who teaches them because it’s something that they will carry on with their life forever,” said Paternostro. “It makes you feel like you are making a real difference.  You are teaching the future.”

But it is Paternostro’s future that’s uncertain right now.

If the budget passes, about 4600 teachers will be laid off.  And the 1500 that will retire or resign next year….will not be replaced.

New York State law mandates that as the last teacher hired at P.S. 65, Paternostro would be the first one out.

She doesn’t think that’s fair.

“There are other factors that should be considered,” said Paternostro. “There are excellent teacher who have been in the system a long time that definitely should have their jobs.  Just as there are also new teachers who deserve that opportunity to gain that experience that have the same qualities who just perform as well.”

Mayor Bloomberg shares her view.

He first threatened to cut 21 thousand teachers … after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed a massive cut in state funding earlier this month.

Many critics say that was the mayor’s push to abolish this “Last in, first out” law. Bloomberg says it should be changed immediately.

“We have great teachers,” said Bloomberg. “And I want to keep the very best if we have to lay off teachers.”

But determining the best teachers is tricky.

Wendy Glash is the union rep at P.S. 65 and a teacher with 25 years of experience.  She says ratings are very subjective.

“It depends on who your supervisor is,” said Glash.”That will guide your rating. I don’t think that, if you want to lay off people based on those ratings, that that’s a fair and equitable way.”

P.S. 65 is one of the top-rated schools in the district and attracts many students.

But almost half of its teachers have less than 5 years of experience.  So they are in danger to be laid off.

PTA President Karina Cevallos says there are barely enough teachers.

“Imagine more kids in the class,” said Cevallos. ”I don’t know how they are going to deal with it.”

That’s left for P.S. 65’s principal, Daysi Garcia, to deal with. She says the mayor and the teachers’ union have been able to works this out in other years.  

“Whatever tools they use to come to the table to try to make those agreements,” said Garcia. “They do it nicely so far year after year. We haven’t had to cut our teachers.”

The mayor doesn’t want to cut teachers, either.

He will negotiate with the city council and most likely come up with another proposal in May.

The council is supposed to vote on the budget by the end of June, right around the end of the school year.

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Metro North introduced a new service: train schedules via text message. Larry Tung/Columbia Radio News

New York’s commuter train Metro North launched a new service today: train schedules via text message.

Richard Romano has been taking Metro North from his home in Poughkeepsie into Manhattan five days a week for the last 20 years.

So train schedules are pretty important to him. Until now, he’s been getting them online.

“I can only do that when I’m near my computer, which is typically the night before I leave for the day or the night before,” said Romano.

Now, he will be able to get that information anytime on his cell phone from a Long Island company named Coo Coo. It piloted the service on the Long Island Rail Road last April.

MTA Chairman and CEO Jay Walder says you start by texting to Coo Coo itself.

“That’s 266-266. You type in where you are and where you want to go. From Rye to Grand Central, ” said Walder. “And within an instant, you get a text message back that tells you what the next five trains are that are coming on the schedule.”

If you are not great with spelling or simply made a typo, not a problem.

Ryan Thompson, a co-founder of Coo Coo, says the system is usually smart enough to correct it.

“We accept abbreviations, we understand that texting inherently uses abbreviation, there’s typos, and the system learns what these idiosyncrasy are of the users and get smart, and we deliver the best information possible,” said Thompson.

That information is free of charge. Right now it doesn’t cost Metro North anything, either.

But Coo Coo is planning to introduce advertising in a few months.

There will be a small footer at the bottom of the text message.

Romano, the customer from Poughkeepsie, says he won’t mind.

“It’s totally reasonable to want to generate revenue from something that people find useful,” said Romano.

There’s no plan to make the service available for the New York subway system yet. MTA chief Walder says that’s because subway riders generally don’t rely on train schedules in the same way Metro North customers do.

But city bus commuters might be in luck. MTA has just launched a pilot program in Brooklyn: tracking bus locations on the B63 line.

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A C letter grade at Gray's Papaya. Photo by Anna Maria Jakubek/Columbia Radio News

It’s been seven months since New York City adopted its new restaurant grading system, and about half the city’s restaurants have gotten letter grades for cleanliness. 13% got Cs, which means MANY violations. But  it’s unclear whether diners are paying attention.

The city’s Health Department introduced the letter grades to make diners more aware of food safety and, in turn, to put public pressure on restaurants to be clean. Health inspectors give restaurants an A for up to 13 violation points, a B for 14 to 27 and a C for more than 28. Bs and Cs can appeal, but once a grade is final, it has to be displayed up front where customers can see it.

Grays’s Papaya at 72nd and Broadway is a New York institution, famous for its cheap hotdogs, political slogans and lots of customers. And…it also has a bright orange C letter grade right in the front window.

“Oh wow,” said Mike Iannuzzi. “Um, no, I didn’t know what that was. I didn’t really pay attention to that when I walked in.”

Iannuzzi just polished off two Gray’s Papaya hotdogs. The restaurant received 35 violation points for problems like roaches, flies and contamination:

“Live roaches, nice,” said Iannuzzi. “Filthy flies on food… uh… not vermin proof that’s kinda scary.”

Iannuzzi says he has a good immune system, but he’ll avoid the Cs from now on.

“Working in the city, you come in contact with germs everyday, but you know it’s good to be able to avoid the germs when you can, so this is great,” Iannuzzi.

Others aren’t as bothered by the grade. Ruiwen Tan, a tourist from Singapore, points to the C and tells his friends the bad news. They go in anyway.

“The food is good and it’s been recommended, so we choose to ignore it,” said Tan.

Duke University behavioral economist Dan Ariely says this indifference may seem counterintuitive:

“So actually, it looks quite surprising that people are willing to go to restaurants that are so dirty and polluted,” said Ariely.

But he explains the willingness to put one’s head in the sand is actually a part of human nature.

“People over-weight their own experience, even if it’s not a relevant experience,” said Ariely. “You know, because the truth is, that when people experience the food in a restaurant, they don’t really know how to measure its cleanliness.”

He says diners also don’t know what the letter grades stand for. Ariely says a system based on emotion would be better.

“What does an A really mean? What does a B really mean?” asked Ariely. “If I saw maybe picture of it, that says that you know a C means that a rat ran over your plate, it would be much more vivid.”

Getting diners to pay attention is one thing, but then there’s the issue of how they should react. Andrew Rigie is the Director of Operations for the New York State Restaurant Association. The group fought hard against the public grading system. He says there’s just no reason to steer clear of low grades.

“I recognize that that restaurant is safe and sanitary enough to serve the public or the health department would close that restaurant,” said Rigie.

After all, a C is not an F.

“Hypothetically there’s over 1000 points that a restaurant could accrue from issued violations, yet it only takes 14 points to be issued a B and 28 points to be issued a C.” said Rigie.

But consumer advocate Sarah Klein says eating at a B- or C- grade restaurant is not a gamble worth taking. She’s a food attorney with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a non-profit focused primarily on food safety issues.

“I would generally advise people not to eat at a restaurant that received lower than an A,” said Klein. “That restaurant clearly lost points for some significant violations, if they were marked all the way down to a C, and those are very real safety considerations that a consumer should take into account.”

Klein says diners who eat at Cs miss the chance to let restaurants know they need to do better. Just because you don’t get food poisoning, that doesn’t mean you should roll the dice:

“It’s like jaywalking: it’s wonderful when you make it safely to the other side of the street, but everybody agrees that under certain conditions, that could have a much worse outcome,” said Klein.

The Health Department says it will finish grading all of the city’s restaurants by the end of the year.

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The Lincoln Square BID encouraged local restaurants to create special menus for Fashion Week. Photo Courtesy of Lincoln Square Business Improvement District

Spring Fashion Week ended yesterday. It was its second run at Lincoln Center. Here’s a look at whether the influx of fashionistas helped local small businesses.

It’s a little after eleven on a Wednesday morning, and Sushi A Go-Go on Broadway near 63^rd Street, doesn’t open until 11:30. But it’s not an average Wednesday – it’s the middle of Fashion Week at Lincoln Center – and people dressed in sleek black coats and designer eyeglasses keep trying to come in and order.

Carissa is a manager at Sushi A Go-Go. She didn’t want to give her last name. She tells the impatient diners to come back and try the special Fashion Week only prix fixe menu.

“When they wear the little Mercedes Benz badges, we show them our lunch specials, our menus, and I think fashion week has just almost tripled our business,” said Carissa.

The city estimates that about 230,000 people attend the biannual event and spend about $770 million. Monica Blum is president of the Lincoln Square Business Improvement District. She doesn’t have numbers for how much visitors spend at small businesses, but…

“It’s not bad for business, let’s put it that way,” Blum said.

She says that as she visited restaurants around Lincoln Center this week, they seemed packed…at least during lunch. But that might not be enough. After September’s Fashion Week, many restaurants complained that lunch rushes did not lead to dinner rushes. Blum says they learned that most people at fashion shows are there for work, not play, so when they’re done, they go home.

Carissa says things are better this time around.

“Dinner rush around, in this area, starts at about six o’clock, maybe even at six-thirty, but now we’ve had to tell people to come earlier, as early as even five o’clock or five-thirty if they wanted to get like a better choice table,” said Carissa.

Restaurants are one thing, but other stores s ay they haven’t seen much of a bump in business. Oscar Garcia is the wine buyer at 67 Wine on Columbus near 67^th Street. He says he doesn’t think Fashion Week patrons are interested in anything very farm from the catwalk.

“It seems to be pretty enclosed within the premises of Lincoln Center. I don’t think they wander around in the neighborhood,” said Garcia.

Blum, of the business improvement district, says Garcia is mostly right. She’s racked her brain trying to think of ways to bring Fashion Week visitors to businesses other than restaurants.

Said Kasami runs a coffee cart at the corner of Columbus and 65^th street, right across from Lincoln Center. He didn’t even know it was Fashion Week, although he did notice some different faces.

“I see new people only for a couple days or one week, that’s it,” said Kasami. “After that, they gone.”

But businesses here are generally doing fine, and for most, Fashion Week is just a bonus. Blum is convinced that all the visitors this week had some kind of impact.

“The streets were mobbed during Fashion Week and I just can’t believe that some of those people didn’t go into the shops,” said Blum.

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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are two of the biggest mortgage finance companies in the country. But these two lenders are slated to be destroyed in the coming fiscal year. To find out how, Linette Lopez talked to Zach Pandel, who specializes in financial markets and the U.S. economy.

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Reel Lives students editing their documentaries at the Paley Center for Media. Photo by Lyle Kane/Reel Lives

Young people who come to New York as refugees face enormous challenges. They have to adapt to a new culture AND come to terms with their painful pasts. Reel Lives is a non-profit filmmaking program that is helping them do just that.

The class of 2010 in the Reel Lives filmmaking program is about to finish editing its first documentaries and hold a viewing party in early April. Lyle Kane is the executive director of Reel Lives. He calls the program a kind of art therapy.

“Telling their stories through film gives sort of a bit of distance which I think in some ways is a good thing,” said Kane. “I think they’re able to see their own experiences with sort of this layer, a buffer zone, in between themselves and their actual narratives.”

Kane is in charge of the twenty-four week intensive program. Students learn to use cameras, write scripts, edit footage, and raise awareness about human rights issues… Kane says, like many non-profits, Reel Lives had a chaotic launch. He collaborated with the International Rescue Committee – which really didn’t seem to know what was going on at first.

“There was some confusion at the IRC about us being able to use a room and I found this out on a Friday and we were doing our workshop on a Saturday so I bought some pizzas and we had the first workshop in a pizza shop,” said Kane.

A lot of the students in the program start with no filmmaking experience. Marieme Sall, whose parents came from Senegal, felt intimidated at first.

“I had no idea what I’d do with the camera,” said Sall. “It looked like it would be as hard as cracking the morse code or something.”

Once they learn how to use the gear, it’s all about telling their stories. Buddha Tamang was born in Bhutan and spent eighteen years in a refugee camp in Nepal. He came to New York two years ago.

“My film carries a message to the young generations to know about what is our culture and to know about our history,” said Tamang.

Tamang’s film is called Cupping the Flame. In it, he shows images of the refugee camps in Nepal and describes what his family went through.

“When the Bhutanese government made us leave the country,” explains Tamang, “it was like waking from a dream.”

He also analyses the existential questions he has grappled with since coming to New York.

Reel Lives executive director Lyle Kane says watching Buddha’s journey has been rewarding.

“Seeing him sort of tell his story and have it slowly shift from something of shame to something that he is sort of proud of,” said Kane. “I think he feels more like a survivor now than something to be sort of ashamed of.”

The Reel Lives class of 2010 has students from Guinea, Liberia, Burkina Faso, and Sierra Leone, and other countries. The students say that diversity makes their group incredibly rich. Nova Bajamonti came from Croatia with her mother.

“I think all of us hold a very unique story and it should be told,” said Bajamonti.

Kane hopes to expand the program. This summer, Reel Lives is going to do an HIV/Aids project with youth who were born and raised in New York.

Applications for the Reel Lives refugee class of 2011 are due tomorrow.

Editor’s note: Post updated on February 20 to correct the spelling of Marieme Sall’s and Buddha Tamang’s last names.

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The Nassau County crime lab is closed until further notice. The lab was shut down today after its drug testing section produced a series of errors in analysis of controlled substances…. says Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice. “In a review of 9 cases of which 6 had erroneous results in term make it impossible for our prosecutors to offer narcotics evidence to the court with the fairness and integrity that I believe are required.” Rice said it appears that these problems remain confined to the drug testing section.

New York State has the most expensive Medicaid system in the nation. Today, a task force released a list of recommendations to cut costs. One is to charge hospitals and nursing homes $750 million more in taxes over the next two years. Health care facilities fear this will force layoffs and reduced services. The tax increase is one of  49 items listed by Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Medicaid task force.

The man accused in a stabbing rampage across New York City last week is due before a Brooklyn judge this afternoon. Authorities say  Maksim Gelman stabbed his stepfather, then killed 3 other people and wounded 4 more over the next 28 hours. He was apprehended on a subway underneath Times Square and is being held on charges of murder and assault.

In his weekly radio address, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg used the last day of fashion week to talk about  immigration reform. He said current rules prevent many foreign fashion models from working runways and photoshoots in New York and elsewhere. He’s urging fashion designers to join his Partnership for a New American Economy. The coalition wants to help companies to attract overseas talent.

Florists, pharmacies and supermarkets in East Harlem are taking part in Age-Friendly New York City. It’s an initiative to make businesses nicer for senior citizens. Stores will provide chairs so shoppers can rest while waiting for service. And window stickers and educational materials will be given out citywide over the next few months.

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This Mayor’s Office kicked off a major new anti-truancy campaign this week. More than 40 percent of New York’s High schools students missing around a month of school Bloomberg enlisted celebrities in the fight against truancy. And new research shoes that chronic absenteeism leaves children less likely to graduate and more likely to end up in jail. But the city is trying to reframe the way it takes on the problem.

New York City public school students: If you’ve missed more than ten days of school, starting this week, this could be your wake up call…

“Morning it’s me! Magic Johnson here. I won five NBA championships and Olympic gold medal, so I’m calling the shots today! Get up out of bed,” it says.

It’s just Magic. In New York State going to school is the law if your under 17. But these robo calls are part of the effort  Mayors Office is moving away from criminalizing truancy. Instead reaching out to students and the parents with mentors and increased social services to get them back to school.

School’s just let out, and on the corner of Amsterdam and 135^th street teenagers are enjoying the first flirt of spring weather. Among them is Raphael Pena, a tall 18 year old with curly butterscotch colored hair. He dropped out last year—and before that, he missed a lot of school.

“Most of the time when I tried to go to school, I show my id,” said Pena. “They be, ‘oh nah you cant go in,’ so I give them a hassle back so then I just don’t go to school.”

Pena says that missing school—and not feeling wanted there as a result—was what led directly to his dropping out.

So the city has been working with the VERA institute of justice to shine a new light on the old issue of truancy… and to introduce some new approaches to the problem.

Vera’s Jessica Gunderson: ”They’ve put in mentoring… this success mentoring is making improvements in the elementary and some of the middle schools. But again when you get to high school its gonna have to be more intensive, more systematic. Re-thinking about why teenagers go to school.”

And Gunderson says, rethinking why they don’t. Vera, and the city, are beginning to turn away from more punitive responses to truancy.

“You gonna come get her now?” said Wanda Matos. “‘Cause school safety gonna take her back right now… yes yes they are getting ready to take her back right now.

Its mid morning Thursday  and Wanda Matos is on the phone with the mother the father and the grandmother of a girl picked up in the lobby of an apartment building. She’s in high-school  but she was supposed to be in 2^nd period was supposed to be in second period. But now she’s here, in a basement room waiting to be taken back to school.

Gunderson says this is how its always been. “ This happens in NYC, they pick ‘em up on the metro, they pick ‘em up on the street,” says Gunderson. “They take ‘em to truancy centers, and the truancy centers are typically staffed by police. And it’s a law enforcement based response.”

And, in New York, it’s not just students who are criminalized. When children don’t show up to school, parents can be punished too. It’s called educational neglect, and it can lead to anything — from a warning from the DA to having your child taken away by childrens services.

Gunderson says it makes sense to hold parents responsible when you are talking about younger children.

“But the idea that a 16-year-old, the mother or guardian can force the kid to go to school or that the threats at that age are going to compel people to respond… There’s just no evidence of it,” says Gunderson.

What there is evidence of, Gunderson says, is that a more school based approach to this problem can help reverse it. And she says, making people aware of just how prevalant chronic absenteeism, is a great start.

“When you look at NYC, you are looking at 40 percent of all high shcoolers missing over a month of school, which is just huge,” said Gunderson.

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On Jeopardy this week, a computer took down two very capable humans. Watson, the IBM computer won one of America’s favorite quiz shows. But what does this mean about human intelligence—are we being replaced?Douglas Hofstadter, a professor of cognitive science at Indiana University, says that despite the win, computers aren’t really thinking.

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Bahrain is the latest Arab Country to see sweeping protests and government crackdowns. But our guest, a Bahrani whose lives and works in Manama, says that the situation isn’t what it was in Egypt. Hamid Azmi says the protesters are mostly driven by Arab factionalism – and that the Bahrani monarchy isn’t that repressive.

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During the State of the Union address in January, President Obama said that he knew his budget would require some sacrifices:

“This freeze will require painful cuts,” said President Obama. “Already, we’ve frozen the salaries of hardworking federal employees for the next two years. I’ve proposed cuts to things I care deeply about, like community action programs.”

Those programs are funded in large part by Community Service Block Grants or CSBGs. The grants help groups that provide aid to needy and vulnerable Americans. Under the budget the president proposed on Monday, CSBGs would be cut by 350 Million dollars – or 50 percent. That’s drawn concern from programs that receive the grants.

Every Thursday evening, a group of immigrants crowd a small office space in Washington Heights to study American history.

“We provide free civics classes where we help individuals prepare for the citizenship exam,” said Angela Fernandez.

Until last week, Fernandez was the executive director for the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights. The group gets just under a fifth of its funding in the form of CSBGs. The Department of Health and Human Services gives CSBG money to the state via the Office of Community Service. State governments then decide how to distribute the money to individual groups. Fernandez says the proposed budget would cut funding at a time when groups like hers need it most.

“Not getting funding from the state is something that we’re going to feel,” said Fernandez.

750,000 New Yorkers would feel it, too. According to the New York State Division of Community Services, that’s how many people received support from CSBG-funded programs last year. New York receives the second largest sum of money for CSBGs. Only California gets more.

David Bradley is the executive director of the National Community Action Foundation.

He says CSBGs fund local programs that provide everything from domestic violence protection to weatherization assistance. And so he has one question for the Obama Administration.

“What particular aspect put it over the line to that made it a program to highlight to attempt to make cut to make this cuts in,” said Bradley.

Budget analyst Tad DeHaven from the CATO institute says that the fact that CSBGs do good things isn’t enough to justify them. He says the grants are wasteful and receive too little oversight.  At the end of the day, he says, decisions about CSBSs are made on the basis of politics and not necessarily sound economics.

“That’s where you get into the examples of waste and abuse and funding for wealthy areas the don’t make a lot of sense,” said DeHaven. “So for instance you now have wealthy towns in Connecticut receiving CSBG money to help building upgrades for a wine bar.”

DeHaven also points to a brewery in Michigan that is receiving CSBG funds for expansion. He said he would rather see funding come from the private sector.

For now, class will continue at the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights.

If the proposed budget cuts to CSBGs are approved by Congress, non-profits could start seeing effects as soon as March of this year.

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Hospitals in Bahrain are treating wounded protestors, following a day of clashes with security forces. At least five are dead and 50 injured, several with gunshot wounds. Soldiers used tear gas and fired guns in the air to break up the crowds gathered for a funeral of a protestor killed this week. The government is defending the crackdown, saying demonstrators are “polarizing the country”. The protesters want the country’s monarch – a U.S. ally in the region – to give up control of top government positions.

It’s not just Bahrian. Citizens are also protesting in Yemen, Jordan and Libya.

Linda Abi Assi reports…

“Unrest in Yemen is now in its ninth straight day. Anti-government demonstrators are clashing with supporters of the country’s longtime ruler and riot police. Three people were killed in the port of Ay-den and 48 were wounded in the southern city of Taiz.

In Jordan, clashes erupted in the capital of Amman between 2 hundred government supporters and about 2-thousand protesters. Demonstrators say they were attacked with batons, stones and pipes. They are protesting to turn the country into a constitutional monarchy. And in Libya, the national congress halted its session indefinitely today as protesters set fire to government buildings and police stations. The crowds are demanding the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has ruled the country for 32 years.”

President Obama today condemned reports of violence against protesters in the middle east.
He’s calling on leaders to show restraint when citizens peacefully gather. The White House says the president receives regular updates on events.

In a speech today at the Asia Society in New York Security of State Hillary Clinton is WARNING the Taliban they have a choice – PEACE or war. Clinton says the insurgents in Afghanistan should pick reconciliation because their strategy of conflict won’t work.

“They cannot wait us out, they cannot defeat us and they cannot escape this choice, ” said Hillary Clinton.

Clinton is also asking for Pakistan’s support, so the Taliban break their alliance with al-Qadea. The U.S. currently has about 78 thousand troops in Afghanistan.

Republicans and democrats ARE NOT working together in Wisconsin, as 14 statehouse Democrats are on the run in Chicago. State troopers have been called-in to bring them BACK. It’s a protest move to shut-down the state-house. Staying away stops a Republican-budget-bill from passing, which would cut union benefits.